The Deity Challenge Line-up #13 - Indonesia

I would have taken the DOF w/ Rome anyway. If he does backstab you, then he gets negative diplo with everyone else. As long as you anticipate it, no harm really done.

I weathered Sweden's attack, and even think I'm going to be able to sack a little city he planted right in a spot I planned to place a city. I settled a peace with Suleiman at great cost (3 luxes and 7 horses), and my spy and England's both immediately tell me he's planning a sneak attack! But now I have some heavily promoted CBs and KSs, so, as long as I can get them down to the front on time, bring it on. I'm probably going to make sacking his and Sweden's cap my goal for the game, since I don't think I can win. I'm going to keep playing, at least until Friday's new game. I've never been so far behind in bpt, pop, infrastructure. But if I could dig myself out of this hole, it would be my best victory ever. Jakarta is a workhorse and has good infrastructure despite the siege and troop production.

Haven't so much as built a trireme for Indonesia's UA.

More detailed writeup of strategy & tactics, but short version: Wanted to try Commerce to take advantage of the INSANE # of available luxuries - particularly with Indonesian UA & this map. Proctectionism was worth 40 happiness, lol.

Policies: Liberty complete, Commerce right side, Rationalism to Secularism, Order to Worker's Faculties, complete Commerce, open Patronage.

Technologies to Globalization and then meh.

Actually got a few wonders - only those in unopened Social Policy trees by AI (Pyramids, Porcelain Tower, Big Ben).

Was a fun game - the other reason to go COmmerce - I needed something to do with all that faith. Bought two Merchants and really enjoyed the 3,600 gp.

Went full Piety and got second to found a religion. Use all early faith to purchase 8 archers and now purchase some warriors for the UU. Finish NC at turn 70+ with 2 cities, after NC now expands into 5 cities. Melbourne is my worker farms, which contributes all my labors.
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=358860941

Went all religioous buildings. Once if the MoD can be built, will start purchase super missionaries as currently there is no need to spread my religion and benefit my neighbors. Heading towards Education and will buy universities after that.
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=358863057

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=358862976

I have been slowly convincing myself of the absolute importance of coastal capital cities, and wanted to make good use of the Indonesian's UA. So, although the starting location was decent, I decided to move my warrior along the two rivers to see if I could find a coastal start. Lo and behold - there was a lovely natural wonder. So I got a hill, river, mountain, natural wonder start (in the end the capital extended to 4 luxuries).

I got 8 free faith from a religious CS so I was able to get the first pantheon, which went straight into One with Nature. I then realized I was fairly close to the ominous prospects of the Ottomans and Rome. I made the decision early to settle one city more or less where I had started, but on the other side of the river so as not to piss off neighbours. There was some good dirt towards Suleiman but I judged this wasn't worth the diplo penalty (I really have learnt a lot from Small Piety diplomacy). I did steal a worker from a CS and Rome, but quickly made peace.

Intermittent working of the natural wonder helped speed up SPs at certain key points. I went Tradition, to make sure I expanded my cultural borders nice and quickly (good decision, I think), but I then decided to go Liberty, as I hoped to be settling a few cities on nice little Spice Islands. Furthermore, liberty made a bit more sense given that I was trying for a CV, so I'd be able to use a GE for a wonder. From Pottery I went straight for Sailing and bought a quick a trireme, to see if there actually any islands worth settling. Then I went Trapping and Mining for the Luxes.

The trireme brought back positive news - there were two close islands with unique luxuries, plus a big continent with about 6 truffles in trireme view. I sent my units and scouts over there and found there were 2-3 really good spots on that new continent, on which sat Ethiopia but blocked by jungle and mountains. The culture from the natural wonder helped get my settler out reasonably early, and I quickly produced another 2. Getting the units, workers and settlers over there was a pain, even escorted by the trireme, due to barb archers. Eventually we got over, and I settled my first city on the big continent. With the money from the free luxuries (sold to my friend Rome) I was able to buy Libraries and more settlers. I had liberty finished and NC built by about T80, with 7 cities. Not sure in retrospect whether settling so many cities was a good idea, but they all offered unique luxuries and would deny Ethiopia becoming the cultural/science powerhouse they often can be. I decided at this point to use the liberty finisher for a GS instead of a GE, as it would help me get to the important cultural wonder techs early enough. I'm not sure if this was a good decision.

By this time I had already got my own religion, and chose Pagodas (although looking back the production boost would have surely been more useful). Noone on my island had a religion yet, so I was licking my lips at being able to convert the whole island. I set all my cities to build Shrines, Temples and Candis. But this is where I missed Small Piety. As I was beelining Acoustics to get Rationalism with my next SP, missionaries and pagodas ended up being pretty expensive. I used my second prophet to try to convert Rome and the Ottomans although it didn't manage to get the elusive diplo modifier on the Ottomans before they had expanded. And then came the missionary spam of Ethiopia. A few turns later Ottomans forward settled me and denounced me on the same turn. On the positive side, I did manage to flip quite a few cities until the late game which was positive for Tithe. I was also able to get Cathedrals in my satellite cities using Ethiopia's religion.

As soon as I got Acoustics, I tried to hard build the Sistine Chapel. Used to using tradition, I was dismayed by how long it was going to take (about 25 turns), but tried anyway. I was spying on Morocco and, when it got down to about 8 turns, noticed that they were building it. Luckily I able to find a way to beat them by 1 turn. Next stop Printing Press for the Leaning Tower. One turn before I got into Printing Press it was taken, so it would have problably trolled me had I gone there first. Globe Theatre then went in the next few turns, so things weren't looking too good.

At this stage I decided that my best chance of CV would be to make a beeline for Exploration, as many civs had Aesthetics so I didn't fancy my chances of Uffizi. My next two policies were therefore the 2nd policy of rationalism and then exploration opener. I got the Louvre, and spammed about 20 archeologists in all my cities, getting all the sites on my two continents.

At this point is when it started to a bit pear shaped. In previous games, I had always had too many cultural policies by the end (after completing Aesthetics, Freedom and Rationalism), so I foolishly decided to go a little further into Exploration, as I had many coastal cities (crazily I thought I might even get to the end and get some hidden sites). However, this was a big mistake as my culture was not moving anywhere near fast enough. There was only one CS in the game, which fortunately I was allied with, but I was unable to propose the World's Fair and missed out on SoL and Sidney OH. So in the end I had to leave Rationalism as it was, and got through Aesthetics and Freedom FAR too late for my liking.

I was able to build PT in my second city, and abused the research agreements. However, not used to playing this wide, I overestimated how quickly I would be at the Internet, and got there far quicker than I had estimated. Luckily I was able to get Eiffel Tower and the CN Tower, which provided free Broadcast Towers in most of my cities just I was hitting Internet. I hadn't used Oxford though as I was planning to use it to get the Internet, so I had to use that for Globalization. I thought at least this would help me try and influence World Congress matters more effectively. I basically failed at this though, not able to push through World Religion and having my luxuries banned (really, seriously, how can pepper provide no happiness?)

Then Morocco declared on me, which was a right pain, as they were one of the two civs that I needed to GM bomb. What followed was a tedious nuclear submarine/battleship slog to get GMs into their territory (luckily, I had saved up a lot of faith for GMs, so their production wasn't the problem, rather their offshore concert tours ). India was the other culture leader, and I was able to get her to help me defend. I used the final GMs on them, and fortunately did manage to scrape a CV just 5 turns before Gandhi BOTH completed his final spaceship part AND became influential with Morocco.

So anyway...I am happy with the victory (CV obviously being much more difficult than Diplo and Science on Deity), and in a lot of ways I made some good decisions, but I also made some pretty bad ones as well. Some of these are as follows. If I had optimised the use of my GSs and RAs I could have probably got up to the Internet about 30 turns earlier. I should have focused more on production in my capital (mines instead of farms), so I could get the important wonders and buildings in a more respectable time. I should have gone into Aesthetics faster, without being tempted by Exploration. I should have focused more on culture buildings in my satellite cities instead of public schools and research labs. This would have helped me get my Hermitage faster. I probably shouldn't have settled cities 6 and 7. It should have also been a priority for me to get more CSs under my wing earlier in order to pass the World Religion vote. But that's the thing about a CV, there are so many things to do and no time/production/gold to do it. It was quite a difficult map actually, with two super aggressive neighbours next to me, and two big cultural powerhouses in India and Ethiopia left relatively unmolested, as well as only one cultural CS.

Wow, peaceful map my ***. First time around I was harassed by Rome and I couldn't get anything built in time.

Second time around, it was turn 105 and Ottomans came at me with bloody Jannies, I mean, wow talk about beelining

Social Policies
Full Tradition
opened Commerce
4 in Rationalism & 3 in Freedom (Universal Suffrage)
2 more in Commerce to get Mercantilism
Freedom to Space Procurements
finished Rationalism
Finished with a Revolutionary wave -51 happiness. Only England followed into Freedom (with 1 city at the time), but they got wiped out.

Went with 6 cities to get full use of the Indonesian UA. I would definitely play this civ again!
Slow start due to moving East to settle by Mt. Fuji and coast.
4 city NC wasn't until after T90. Got Education ~T115
Public schools ~T155. Things really started falling into place around here
Plastics ~T190. Used only 1 of 3 available GS.
T193 used faith-bought GE to finish Statue of Liberty. Used free policy to get 25% discount on purchasing. Bought 6 Research labs. Science at 1042! Pretty sure I've never even been near 1000 science by turn 200.

Religion
One with Nature
Tithe
Pagodas
Swords into Plowshares
Itinerant Preachers
Got Pagodas in all 6 cities, using a total of 3 missionaries to spread.
Bought 3 GE, using them on Statue of Liberty, Hubble Space Telescope, and Sydney Opera House (which helped finish Rationalism quicker)

Also built Big Ben, Eiffel Tower, and Porcelain Tower.
At T258, city populations were 48, 20, 23, 24, 23, 20

6 city tradition game. I planned on going 5 because I forgot how many free luxuries is in the game for Indies. So it was 3 cities on the mainland, NC, and then 3 more around the islands. Education around 120 because of some detours. Indonesia are really fun on a map like this, because there will likely never be a shortage of gold.

Scored Sistine Chapel, burned a faith GE on Eiffel because religion was good for the most part and caught Porcelain Tower. The game was fairly slow, so I had the first pick on 180ish, very late. Used a GS bulb to save Oxford for Internet. Probably Freedom would have been better for quicker growth but happiness was a bit of an issue towards the end. Even though my science wasn't really all that good, I managed to open Internet around 235

And of course, there has to be one smartass (Augustus) who refused to open borders, which delayed the game a bit, but I tricked him because he was one of the civs who had less happiness so he enjoyed Communism. In the end, I made a total of 6 musicians, sent each of them to a different country and saved a pair for Rome. I waited until the gap was closed down, declared war, bombed and that was it. The residue picked off the remaining civs who were a few turns away anyway.

So definitely an edited map and not particularly a huge fan of it. I realized the goal was to try and get people to utilize the Indonesian UA but not having the settler start on the coast sort of defeats that purpose on first play through. I feel like this map plays very differently based on whether it would be your first play through vs already having map knowledge.

I would definitely play it completely different and settle the capital on the coast near the natural wonder if I was to play it again. Then either do a liberty domination or do a 4-5 city tradition by settling 2-3 of those on other continents for the UA. I think with map knowledge this is definitely an easy map but without I would probably consider this much harder than the others I've played in the 'easy' category due to the aggressive neighbors and average start location.

That being said this ended up being one of my most interesting diety games as the Ottomans were crazy aggressive but I was able to stick with it.

Summary:

Turn 90 - NC with a 4 city tradition start:


Turn 104 - Recapture Makassar from the Ottomans which declared war and rushed with about 15 units just after I finished NC. Ended up building a bunch of spears and then upgrading to pikes when I hit civil service to take it back. I was very close to losing everything and giving up on this. Probably first diety game that I lost a city pre-100 and decided to play on:


Turn 111 - Started marching on Ottoman's Ankara with a GG bomb but he ends up getting Janissaries so I decide to peace out as I only have pikes at this point:


Turn 115 - Education though short on gold to be able to buy very many universities so crappy science:


Turn 185 - Conquer Ankara after a long and slow siege with mostly crossbows. Forgot what turn I got public schools but ended up having to declare war on Ottomans since he had used 3 GG bombs to steal my land and had the 4th about to plant which would have made my 4th city pretty much useless. I've never seen the AI use GG bombs so aggressively. Might have to do with that fact I GG bombed him first then peaced out?


Turn 208 - Finally get research labs. Science is decent now but having 6 cities and 1 puppet makes techs expensive. Starting to think building the additional 2 cities for the UA wasn't worth it and probably slowed things down in the end.


Turn 271 - Science victory


Closing thoughts:
Definitely could win this much faster with map knowledge and avoiding the early wars. The early war with Ottomans probably cost me 30 turns alone playing it this way. Though if you do a coastal capital and just feed it with coastal trade routes then you could probably get a SV around 220-230 easily.

Crazy game with the Ottoman aggression and then I couldn't get enough votes to make any WC proposals until around turn 255. The AI of course didn't propose anything useful so never completed WF, IG, or ISS. This meant really low culture and having 6 cities made it even worse. I ended up also having to take Order as the 3rd civ so no bonus policies and only ended up with 2 policies in Order total. This obviously makes the end game painful without being able to rush buy the last part and not getting the extra GS.

Capital on the coast besides Mt Fuji for the observatory and cargo TR. 3 city NC, with 3 more cities on new continents and a 7th city on another NW to boost my OWN pantheon. A lot of lux meant a lot of gold, was able to get most of the CS early, only problem was the lack of culture CS so culture wasn't good, only 1 on the map. Missed entering information era by 1 turn so had to wait another 30 for the vote. Stay peaceful with everyone until end where I DoW Liz to keep my CS.

Got both WR and WI:freedom on WC, way more than enough votes with globalisation.

Went freedom, and most other AI followed, everyone hated Liz and Suleiman since they were the only warmongers. Liz took Stockholm and Suleiman eliminated Rome.